Friday, September 18, 2015

When I was a child, the release of the new Radio Times was an event of the greatest significance. This is no exaggeration: on a weekly basis, I'd be actively excited about the content and / or cover of the new edition, a feeling I now recognise as being akin to the way boring people feel about sport. My grandmother would bring the magazine back from the high street in her old-woman's tartan wheelie-bag, and inspecting it was a priority that even trumped checking the Space Travel collectors' card in the PG Tips box or artistically stacking the Oxo cubes in the kitchen cupboard (yeah, there was less to do in those days). Because in the late '70s and early '80s, the Radio Times could look like this:

Or
this:

(You can, of course, click any of these for a better look.)

A
word of explanation, for younger readers and other not-we. Until the
early '90s, there was fierce regulation of TV and radio listings in
the UK. Only the Radio Times provided a complete guide to the BBC; only the TV
Times provided a complete guide to ITV and - from 1982 - Channel 4. Newspapers listed the
schedules, but with minimum details. All decent
middle-class households bought the Radio Times
and the TV Times in
order to cover all channels, but that seemed acceptable because they
only cost 35p.

There
was, however, a difference between the publications. While Radio
Times covers might be like
this...

...TV Times covers were almost always like this.

Yeah. If you can't read it, there's a banner in front of Cannon & Ball
advertising Russell Grant's astrology column. The rightmost Radio
Times, meanwhile, is the RT parodying
itself at the behest of Not the Nine O'Clock News.

A
general principle here, which should appeal to anyone interested in
the traditions of old-school BBC telly: “democracy isn't giving people what they want, it's doing what you think is right and then letting people judge you for it”. For
all its faults and misfires, the BBC has traditionally proved itself
against commercial channels in this way, and the comparison between
the Radio and TV
timeses tells you everything. The mandate of the BBC was
experiment, inquiry, and a cultural idealism that was best
exemplified by David Attenborough (in his old role as controller of BBC2
rather than “just” a wildlife presenter-explorer) but is now
routinely described as “elitist” by bottom-feeders in the employ of Rupert Murdoch. It worked for the BBC and it worked for
the Radio Times. When deregulation came in 1991, and all channels
appeared in all magazines, it still outsold the TV Times.
A typical RT letter of
that era would grumble about the interpretation of Iago in BBC2's version
of Othello. A typical
TVT letter would plead
with Bet Lynch about the door policy of the Rovers Return as if she
were a real person.

My
favourite Radio Times
cover of t'olden days, however, is this:

Three
old men and a stuffed Yeti, advertising a comedy-drama about a zoo
facing a nuclear war. (It was the '80s. The Old Men at the Zoo
was scripted by Troy Kennedy Martin, who went on to write Edge of
Darkness, a less jovial nuclear thriller which was nonetheless
originally about a policeman turning into a tree.)

And
here we have the nub of it. Look at all the covers I've shown you so far. Every one of them
publicises either an unfamiliar series or a one-off special. A documentary about cosmology, when such a thing was
still a novelty? Intriguing. Serious investigation into the
consequences of digital technology, as illustrated by a TV
Cyber-Samurai? Cutting edge. Three old men and a stuffed Yeti...?
Cover material! At the time, no commercial channel would
have risked making these programmes; no publication other than the
Radio Times would have
risked putting them on the cover; no other magazine would have made
me-as-a-child feel so involved in the wider world.

This
is a point that Doctor Who
fandom tends to miss. No Tom Baker story made the cover of the RT
(although some would argue that the interiors made up for this, given
how we tend to think of Frank Bellamy's Skarasen as the
Skarasen). I've heard fan-folk suggest that this was some form of
snobbery, but the truth appears less cynical: Doctor Who never got cover status in the late '70s because it didn't need help,
because it was accepted as part of the mainstream, because its return
was inevitable. It made sense to keep reminding people of the series'
existence in the '60s, when viewing figures were unstable and nobody
was even sure if it could survive the absence of Hartnell. It made
sense to hype the Barry Letts version throughout Pertwee's run, when
the series was redefining itself as something colourful, dynamic, and
occasionally even chic. Sort of. After 1974, though, the programme found its
safe ground. Doctor Who
could look after itself. It didn't get another cover until 1983,
partly because the twentieth anniversary deserved a celebration,
partly because 1983 was when it found itself in trouble again.

That
was then. But it was an age when both the BBC and its inky
right-hand-man were still reasonably idealistic.

Here
are some covers from last year:

And from the year before that:

And before that:

TV
Times triumphant.

This
would have been unthinkable until relatively recently in the BBC's
history. I freely admit to liking Bake Off,
but the key point is that it shouldn't need
advertising this way: it's a much-loved and highly-rated programme on
BBC1, and twenty or thirty or forty years ago, the Radio
Times would have accepted it as
such while putting an obscure new
project on the cover. Likewise The Apprentice,
which personally I'd never watch in a hundred lifetimes.
The third example here isn't even worth mentioning by name.

The
cover of the Radio Times
is now a statement of the familiar. “Well, Here's
Something Interesting” is replaced by “LOOK! THAT SERIES YOU
ALWAYS WATCH IS COMING BACK!”. This matches the hideous shift in
the publication's whole nature, from an organ of curiosity to a banal
Lifestyle Magazine. Its current TV editor, the abominable Alison
Graham, is literally too thick to understand the plots of mainstream
television dramas. Even as late as the '90s, all of this would have
seemed ridiculous.Still, it's different for us Doctor Who
people, isn't it? One of the great joys of the series, when it was resurrected ten years ago, was that it made the covers of the Radio
Times look like this:

Yeah,
screw you, Alan Sugar!

Ahhh,
but wait, though.

The
most significant of these three is, of course, the Human Dalek that accompanied “Daleks in Manhattan”. It's notable because it's
the first Radio Times
cover to give away the sodding cliffhanger, but the real point is
that Russell T. Davies knew this when he OK'd it: he explicitly said
that he wasn't sure whether the cover or the cliffhanger was the
bigger deal. With hindsight we like to think he made the wrong
choice, but let's look at it with extra-hindisght.
He thought about whether putting a half-human half-Dalek
mutant on the cover would benefit the series,
and made his decision based on that.

Bear
this in mind when you look at these.

The
most obvious point to make is that with the exception of the Dalek
election issue (too good for them to resist), Doctor Who
covers since 2010 have dedicated themselves to publicising
Moffat-scripted episodes. I'm not going to suggest that this is
because he's an awful, awful man who's lobotomised the series by
turning it into his own personality cult, because if you haven't
already worked that out then you're very stupid. But I will point out
that - again, for all his faults - Russell T. Davies didn't play it
this way, at least not in the beginning. On Davies' watch, we have
covers that suggest the story rather than the people who make it,
breaking the modern Radio Times
norm and returning us to a more dynamic era. This starts to fall
apart at the same time as the series itself, circa 2008, when the
Celebrity Age of Doctor Who
really kicks in and David Tennant's presence becomes more important
than any of his adventures; the point when the coups of hiring John
Simm or Catherine Tate or Kylie Minogue become bigger news than the
content.

But
by the time we get to Moffat's reign, it's faces (and, in the case of
Karen Gillan, absurdly gratuitous thighs) all the way. Mug-shots of the actors
he cast, in the stories he wrote, with anything else relegated to
background. Given the showrunner's general contempt for science fiction - remember, this is a man whose distrust of the nerdishness of SF is
such that despite liking the work of Iain Banks, he refuses to read
anything by Iain M. Banks on principle - we'd hardly expect curiosity to be at the core of the show, but nor would
anyone in 2005 have expected the publicity material to be about
celebrity profiles rather than (say) monsters or alien planets.
Monsters and alien planets would be far more likely to draw in
non-fans, yet that's not the purpose here. This is brand reinforcement.
Even Doctor Who becomes a Lifestyle product instead of an
adventure. The fetishisation of the Doctor, the notion of the series
being about the star rather than the worlds he visits, is only one
aspect of this.

You'll
note that I didn't include the most telling example. It's this one:

I'm putting my cards on the table now. I haven't watched Doctor
Who since 2011, because it was
just horrible and I don't like staring at things that make me feel
bad. I've never criticised the content of the programme since then,
because I'm simply not qualified: I can criticise the way it's
marketed, but that's
true of endless Hollywood blockbusters that I'll also never see. (My
former flatmate, rather younger than myself and a Doctor
Who fan for much of his early
life, only bothered to watch about half of the last season and
described it as “a waste of good Capaldi”. I'm inclined to trust
him.) At around the same time that I finally gave up on the
series, I stopped reading the Radio Times,
for not dissimilar reasons.

So
when the above issue came out in
2013, I walked past it several times in numerous supermarkets without
having any idea that it was actually a Doctor Who
cover. It could've been advertising Emmerdale
for all I knew. I only realised the truth because I had to move
a television set for an ancient relative, and was in the same room as her copy of the RT
for long enough to notice the git with the bow-tie standing on the
right.

A comparison with the past feels like a cheap shot, but that doesn't mean it isn't fair.

Does
any of this really matter, though? It's just a listings magazine.
Does it make any difference to what the BBC Proper actually
produces...?

Hmm. Now, I don't know about you, but for me the BBC
adaptation of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was the best television of this year. It was only halfway through that I found out the scriptwriter works
on Doctor Who these
days, and good for him, it's nice to know Moffat may have a successor
who isn't terrible. However, let's consider the unlikeliness of Strange &
Norrell's production. A vast, epic,
hugely-budgeted, joint-American BBC production, shown in prime-time
on a Sunday night! A sprawling, literate nineteenth-century fantasy requiring
the creation of an entire alternate world, like nothing attempted in
the Corporation's recent history! So obviously, the cover of the
Radio Times in the week of the first episode is going to publicise...

...er...

...okay.

Strange
& Norrell wasn't reassuring
enough, y'see. The RT
approved of it on its “picks” page, but putting elemental parallel-universe magicians on the
cover when it's not a tested series and doesn't have known celebrities as the stars...? Nah. In the middle of Strange &
Norrell's run, Channel 4 started
showing Humans during the same timeslot, a programme best
summarised as Hollyoaks
with robots. Channel 4 won this war, with
a massively inferior series, because it actually bothered to
advertise Humans.
Whereas on the night of the final Norrell, one Twitter user with a TARDIS in his ruddy avatar told me that he'd "never even heard of it until tonight". The RT
is meant to be one of the BBC's key publicity devices, yet it can't
even sell a massive-scale drama production to a ready-made audience
if the content involves imagination
of any kind. The result is that any similar production becomes vastly
less likely, especially with an appalling 10% budget cut on the way.

I
think we all know that the BBC, however much we may slag it off for
its transgressions, has historically been fantastically good at
its job. My generation took this for granted, but it's now under
threat. And though we (not unreasonably) see its key enemies as being
right-wing fanatics – the government and the press, even though the
Corporation's recent current affairs output has been ludicrously pro-Conservative –
its greatest liability is its own fear of deviating from the modern
commercial norm, despite the fact that deviating from the commercial
norm is its entire purpose. The Radio Times
is more culpable in this than any other single part of the operation.

Friday, January 03, 2014

Friday, November 22, 2013

The proposition: that all Doctor Who is ridiculous, hackneyed, and saa-aad...

...unless you're interested in the time in which it was made. Every story ever told, every work of culture ever cultured, has to be judged in the context of its era: Our Thing goes further. A narrative spread across decades, stealing from the rest of human creation by its very nature, magpie-collecting from all of history and from all the storytelling devices we've used to make sense of that history. Watch virtually any other television made in 1963, and you're looking at something that only makes sense if you're first-generation Homo '60s, something you can mock for its scenery-flat cowboys or its egregious use of the word "transistor". Watch the very earliest Doctor Who, and you're watching something about 1963 as much as something that happened to be made there. The ability of the TARDIS to step outside the here-and-now means that every episode is a commentary on its own place in time.

Now we've arrived at the great jubilee, every blogger and broadsheet is listing its Ten Best Stories, or Best Stories of Each Doctor, or All Stories Ranked According to Personal Prejudice. But the final verdict has to be this: Doctor Who has bound itself into every year in which it's been made. I couldn't care about "An Unearthly Child" without being curious about early '60s radiophonics and early '60s war-baby thinking. I couldn't care about "Carnival of Monsters" without taking an interest in '50s SF literature, and the way it affected the people who wrote for TV twenty years later. I couldn't care about "Weng-Chiang" without wondering how the Hammer-gothic tradition shaped British pop-culture in the years that followed. I cculdn't care about "Caves of Androzani" unless I cared about I, Claudius as well, though admittedly that's a bit of a weird one on my part.

Which is why the need to rank and review Doctor Who stories, usually according to spurious rules of sci-fi telly devised years after those stories were made, is a curse on all of us. Lists have always been our downfall. Consider Doctor Who as a mass of TV-making, ethic-defining principles hurtling forwards in time, smacking against the what-we-now-call-tropes of every age and making fabulous, unpredictable shrapnel. Endless pages of About Time - by myself and Tat Wood, and you can often see the bloodstains on the pages where we're ripped chunks out of each other - were wasted in arguing about whether we liked any given story. But the internet is already made of reviews, and besides, Doctor Who covers so much territory that none of us will ever agree with anybody else re: what it really "is". I can only say what I think it is...

...it's like nothing else on Earth. Nobody else in 1963 was making anything that looked like "The Daleks". Nobody else in 1982 was making anything that told the same kind of story as "Kinda". Nobody else in 2005 was making anything that resembled "Rose" at all.

So there it is. All Doctor Who is ridiculous, hackneyed, and saa-aad - let's say it, unwatchable - unless you're primed to understand its place in history. This is, and will be, just as true of the present series as it was of the past: future generations, should they be able to neuro-experience their complete set of iPsych engrams before complete global meltdown, won't be able to appreciate the Matt Smith era unless they also appreciate superhero movies, the cinema version of Harry Potter, XBox-age video gaming, or the early twenty-first-century version of slash-fic. I don't appreciate any of these things, which is why I find it unwatchable now, and also why I hate the modern world. Natch.

But am I right...? Yes, of course I am! Don't be silly. The ad for "The Day of the Doctor" looks as if it should have "not actual game footage" at the bottom of the screen. I'm also entirely wrong, according to people who were eleven-ish in the early '70s and think Doctor Who is all about alien invasion stories, or people who were born just after "Survival" and have no problem with that f***ing fez.

I have nothing else to say, but I don't want "fez" to be the last word.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Friday, April 19, 2013

"Does Lord Azaxyr look like a bitch?" Perhaps my favourite thing about the Ice Warriors is that despite their frosty reptilian exteriors, one of them was always played by Sonny Caldinez, a name more suggestive of a sleazy Cuban hitman with a late-'70s moustache and a medallion tangled in his chest-hair. (Actually, Caldinez is from Trinidad, and thus about as far from frosty and reptilian as you can get. But he was known for his late-'70s moustache.) Here, though, we see proof that Mars' own criminal faction has been influencing the human underworld for decades. Tarantino would go on to work with the Sontarans in his movie "Glourious Deth".

That Unfortunate First Page of "Doctor Who and the Crusaders"

Or, "Doctor Who and the Nightmare of Eton". The typo is now well-known, but almost as disturbing is the next paragraph's description of Ian and Barbara as the Doctor's "close friends", right after it admits that he kidnapped them. Because all great companions start out as victims of Stockholm Syndrome.

"He looks like that disc jockey!" "Mm? Ehh? Are you calling me a paedo? Hm!"

You Know What...?

I'm now so thoroughy depressed, appalled, and irritated by the tabloid media's war on (a) the BBC and (b) facts, I can't even be bothered doing the joke about the deleted scene from "A Fix with Sontarans" that was supposed to accompany this photo. (Yeah, it's just two schoolgirls giggling outside a police box. Whatever punchline you like, really.) But I will mention that in 1977, the same year Mary Whitehouse's assault on Doctor Who reached its most vitriolic point, she presented Jimmy Savile with a special award for his "wholesome family entertainment". Then, as now, morality campaigners were very bad at spotting actual immorality. Even when it was standing right next to them in a DayGlo vest.

In Other News...

Foamasi puts pasta in microwave without piercing film lid: full story, page 3...

...man who asked to be crushed between the chests of two mummies explains, "I was expecting MILFs": full story, page 3...

...environmentalists claim Doctor Who "using up 80% of the world's blue light": full story, page 3...

...long-term Doctor Who viewer, told to "go away and be a fan of something else", responds with elementary "go away and stop ruining our programme" defence: full story, page 3...

Morality Corner: Your Ethical Questions Answered

"To exterminate a life-form... to know that just by touching two wires together, I have the power of life and death over an entire species... do I have that right?"

"Yes! Duh: how are you going to look cool when you're agonizing about stuff? In fact, not only should you broadcast an order to commit genocide against creepy-looking aliens, you should turn your sonic screwdriver into a gun so that you can help your love-interest slaughter as many of them as possible on the way out. Then, once she's good and hot from all the killing, cop off with her while dramatic music plays in the background and the viewers cheer like the shit-eating battery animals we all know they are. Haven't you seen any action movies? Get with the programme, granddad!"

Next time: how to end "The Silurians" after episode four, by gouging their eyes out with razors and claiming it's a revolution.

You Fat Bastard

My Adipose stress-toy burst after ten days of squeezing, so there's something very wrong with at least one of us. However, the packaging features one of the best warnings in the history of consumerism: "To avoid strangulation risk, do not stretch the Adipose around anyone's neck." The Autons could only dream of this brave new world.

Commercial Break

"Gold prices are at an all-time high. Do you have gold jewellery you no longer need? We'll give you cash for it, no questions asked. At LeaveEarthDefenceless.com, we just... we just want to take it away from you. Please."

Ooh, look! You can still visit the Beasthouse...

...at www.beasthouse.co.uk

The Seal of Rassilon

"Zirg didn't mind advertising the other Daleks, but felt that advertising Dr Who was somewhat beneath his dignity." Actually, although Sandwich-Board-Dalek is the most immediately noticeable thing about this cover, a more striking point is that the video was released by HBO... now known for The Wire, True Blood, and other things which don't seem on an obvious creative trajectory from Roy Castle falling over on a lever. A third point is that the tagline specifies an adventure in space, but not in time. So we can say with some certainty that the fall of the Dalek city took place in 1965, and not 1963 as Lance Parkin claimed.

The New Argos Catalogue: "Magic Wands" Section

Convenient, easy-to-use gadgets for any cosmic adventurer or television scriptwriter who can’t be bothered to do things properly.

MW1. The HandyHand 3000. This portable, cheekily-shaped utility can hold up to 120 gigaspacks of regeneration energy, even the kind that makes absolutely no sense. Extra features include the ability to undermine what “regeneration” actually means, and the option to grow into a full-scale biological copy of the user for no discernable reason. No mechanical parts: every HandyHand 3000 is lovingly sliced from the wrist of a newly-regenerated Time Lord, who must be wondering why he never thought of doubling his lifespan by doing this sort of thing before. Guaranteed to be described as “iconic” in ten years’ time instead of “shit”. Cat. no. 202413.

MW2. Archangel Satellite System. The ideal gift for the evil mastermind on the go, the Archangel Satellite System allows today’s megalomaniac to brainwash an entire country in less than eighteen months, and become Prime Minister without the fuss of using his hypnotic powers or doing anything really devious. Can also be used to magically heal a shrunken, wizened time-traveller, and thus reaffirm his belief in the greatness of humanity. (Warning: reaffirming your belief in the greatness of humanity may involve convincing millions of people across the world to slavishly pray to a spurious messiah-figure, without any of the bad guys’ informers finding out about it.) Cat. no. 191312.

MW3 . Wristband Teleporter. The perfect way to get characters exactly where they need to be, without any need for proper coordinates or logical storytelling. Comes equipped with the new WhateverFix system: if disabled by a sonic device, the wristband can be re-booted just by punching in two digits from a completely different teleportation device that’s been produced by a completely different technology. Capable of transporting three people halfway across the galaxy and billions of years back in time, unless used in the middle of a Dalek attack, in which case it’s capable of transporting one person from Cardiff to London while leaving everybody else behind to die. Cat. no. 190311.

MW 4. Sonic Screwdriver. Our best-selling item, the Mk IV Screwdriver can do virtually anything the modern-day cosmic adventurer might ask, from soldering to rhinoplasty. Can also be waved in the faces of onlookers while you shout “it isn’t a massive cop-out, it’s part of the mythology!”. If trapped on a planet at the end of time and surrounded by cannibals while the Master steals your TARDIS, then why not try using the screwdriver in conjunction with item MW3, and instantly destroying any hope of dramatic tension? Cat. no. 182301.

MW5. Interdimensional Hoover. Scientific research has proved that nothing can exist in the void between universes, and that neither time nor matter have any meaning there, which is why it’s full of background radiation. Take advantage of this bizarre quirk of physics with the Interdimensional Hoover, powerful enough to suck up even the toughest ground-in Daleks and deposit them in an eternal interstitular Hell. Comes with a patented filter attachment, to prevent the dimension-hopping TARDIS being sucked out of the universe at the same time, somehow. (Warning: users are advised to use the Hoover only during an incredibly sad and distracting goodbye, to stop anyone asking how it works.) Cat. no. 180212.

MW 6. Self-Destructive Human Stooge. Hand-reared to sacrifice him- or herself for the greater good in any crisis, even when it’s entirely out of character. A perennial favourite, the Stooge also comes in “annoying American teenager” and “diminutive Australian”. Cat. no. 200410.

MW 7. Openable TARDIS Console. Still our most talked-about item, the Console allows even the most inexperienced user to access all the power of space and time (tow-truck not included), and is fitted with built-in “faith manipulators” to convert the emotional excitement of an end-of-season two-parter into pure Dalek-slaying energy while bypassing all logic and reason. Can only be used once without ripping the universe apart. (Has already been used twice.) Cat. no. 169113.

MW8. Thing That Can Vanish a Two-Hundred-Foot-Tall Cyberman. Christ knows how this one's supposed to work. Cat. no. 203500.

In Other News...

...world's philosophers admit to feeling "a bit silly" after last scene of "Prisoner of the Judoon" explains meaning of life: full story, page 3...

...following Australian court's ruling that obscene drawings of characters from The Simpsons qualify as "child pornography", 12,000 fanboys immediately arrested for writing slash-fic about sex with two-day-old girl: full story, page 3...

After Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Jekyll, BBC announces quest to find other UK legends that Steven Moffat can completely miss the point of and then ruin for everybody in the future: full story, page 3...

The Words to Well-Known Doctor Who Themes

Although the location-footage music in "City of Death" is instrumental, everyone who hears it instinctively knows that the words are "running through Paris, we're running through Paris, we're running through Paris, we're running through France". But do any modern-day Doctor Who themes have words? Indeed they do...

1. Rose's "Doomsday" Theme

"Leeeeet's hope they never bring her baaack though, 'cos thaaaaat would be a bit too shite..."

2. Martha's "Dramatic" Theme

"Mar-tha... I can't say her real name, it's Free-ma, then something with an 'A'..."

FIVE

"Hey, I've been eaten by shadows...! Hey, I've been eaten by shadows...! Hey, I've been eaten by shadows...!"

SIX

Unexpected super-powers.

Absurd fetishisation of the Doctor.

Imminent godhood.

SEVEN

Sitcom characterisation.

Squee.

The Beast.

Oh, All Right Then...

...yes, yes, I know. I'm just bitter and jealous.

The last time I tried to e-mail Steven Moffat was, predictably, shortly after he got his sneery Scots backside into the producer's chair. No, it's true: even his backside is capable of sneering. I asked him whether he could possibly lift my exile from BBC Books, (a) because it'd keep me quiet without requiring him to have any personal contact with me, and (b) because I'd probably do a better job of writing for the re-vamped range than anyone else who might possibly want to do it (remember, he actually liked my work, at least when it wasn't pointing in his direction). He never replied, and a couple of months later, it was announced that Michael Moorcock would be writing a Doctor Who novel. Call me paranoid, but just for a moment, it felt as if someone were deliberately trying to prove me wrong.

Then again, maybe I shouldn't have started the e-mail with the words "Dear Cheeky-Chops".